Wednesday, 30 July 2014

He may not be a Muslim (I don't think he is), but Obama sure does like to enable it, even or especially its more radical ends...
Another great article from Middle East watcher Raymond Ibrahim, who closely researches and translates Arab media:
"World Leaders Lambast Obamas 'Failures', in the Middle East".
Snip/

... Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, indirectly point to the Obama administration’s failures in the Middle East. This occurred during an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, in the context of the Presbyterian Church of the USA’s recent decision to divest from Israel in the name of the Palestinian people.

You know, I would suggest to these Presbyterian organizations to fly to the Middle East, come and see Israel for the embattled democracy that it is, and then take a bus tour, go to Libya, go to Syria, go to Iraq, and see the difference. And I would give them two pieces of advice, one is, make sure it’s an armor-plated bus, and second, don’t say that you’re Christians.

While not directly mentioning the U.S.’s role in these three nations... the obvious is clear: 1) the U.S. played a major role “liberating” two of these countries—Iraq and Libya—and is currently supporting the freedom fighters/terrorists trying to “liberate” Syria; and 2) in all three nations, the human rights of non-Muslims, specifically Christians, have taken a dramatic nosedive, evincing the nature of those the U.S. helped empower.

Monday, 28 July 2014

Days before the recent Israel/Hamas conflict erupted, the Presbyterian Church USA withdrew $21 million worth in investments from Israel because, as spokesman Heath Rada put it, the Israeli government’s actions “harm the Palestinian people.”

Soon after, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and was asked if he was “troubled” by the Presbyterian Church’s move. Netanyahu responded:

It should trouble all people of conscience and morality because it’s so disgraceful. You know, you look at what’s happening in the Middle East and I think most Americans understand this, they see this enormous area riveted by religious hatred, by savagery of unimaginable proportions. Then you come to Israel and you see the one democracy that upholds basic human rights, that guards the rights of all minorities, that protects Christians—Christians are persecuted throughout the Middle East. So most Americans understand that Israel is a beacon of civilization and moderation. You know I would suggest to these Presbyterian organizations to fly to the Middle East, come and see Israel for the embattled democracy that it is, and then take a bus tour, go to Libya, go to Syria, go to Iraq, and see the difference. And I would give them two pieces of advice, one is, make sure it’s an armor plated bus, and second, don’t say that you’re Christians.

It’s difficult—if not impossible—to argue with Netanyahu’s logic. Indeed, several points made in his one-minute response are deserving of some reflection.

From the inimitable Sam Harris.
Israel is losing the PR battle. But there's a difference in intent here. The intent of Hamas is to kill all Jews. The intent of Israel is to stop the indiscriminate bombing of Israeli civilians.
Sam Harris asks: what would each side do if it could do what it wants? Hamas would kill all Jews. Israel would live in peace with peaceful neighbours. There's a clear moral dichotomy here.
I recall a summary of Israel-Palestine:
"If Palestinian lay down their arms there will be peace; if Israel lays down its arms it will be annihilated".
But what of the West Bank? Again, if Palestinians had taken on Gaza and focussed on economic development -- instead of bombing Israel -- the west bank issue would already have been sorted. Why should they give over more land, when the land they've already given is used as a base to kill its people?
Sam Harris:

And again, you have to ask yourself, what do these groups want? What would they accomplish if they could accomplish anything? What would the Israelis do if they could do what they want? They would live in peace with their neighbors, if they had neighbors who would live in peace with them. They would simply continue to build out their high tech sector and thrive.
What do groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda and even Hamas want? They want to impose their religious views on the rest of humanity. They want stifle every freedom that decent, educated, secular people care about. This is not a trivial difference. And yet judging from the level of condemnation that Israel now receives, you would think the difference ran the other way.
This kind of confusion puts all of us in danger. This is the great story of our time. For the rest of our lives, and the lives of our children, we are going to be confronted by people who don’t want to live peacefully in a secular, pluralistic world, because they are desperate to get to Paradise, and they are willing to destroy the very possibility of human happiness along the way. The truth is, we are all living in Israel. It’s just that some of us haven’t realized it yet.

Saturday, 26 July 2014

BBC radio today had a guest who claimed that the Sudan apostasy case was nothing but a family spat which "got out of control". Nothing to do with Islam, you know...
But if Islam didn't have a doctrine that apostates must be killed, there would have been nothing for the "family spat" to draw on. Yet it does have such a requirement. The Umdat al-Salik, the classic manual of Islamic jurisprudence, makes it clear: any person who apostasies from Islam must be killed. (o8.1)

The spruikers of a third runway demand that we taxpayers stump up at least $200 billion to pay for a third runway at Chek Lap Kok.

That’s $ 30,000 for every man, woman and child in Hong Kong. Or nearly $200,000 per taxpayer.

Surely the proponents of the third runway owe us an explanation: why they don’t increase the efficiency of the airport, before demanding that we spend vast sums on more concrete?

We are told by various sources that efficiency of the airport has dropped dramatically in recent years, as more narrow-bodied aircraft flying to secondary airports are allowed landing slots. These should be weeded out, to focus on wide-bodied jets servicing key cities.

One iron rule I learnt when working as a diplomat in China was this: never ask a question if it will only provoke the answer you don't wish to hear.[Tim Collard, SCMP, 22nd July 2014]

As a diplomat myself in China, I agree 100% with Tim Collard.
Hong Kong now divides now has a clear divide ("one divides into two" -- yi fen wei er -- as Mao Tse-tung said).
1. The pan-democrats, or the "crash and burn" lot: who want prospective Chief Executive candidates to be chosen by the public
2. The rest of us -- the silent majority -- who say that's not allowed in the Basic Law of Hong Kong, and who care to keep what we have than to risk a confrontation with China. The candidates should be selected by a nomination committee. We'd rather not "ask the question" (for public nomination) when we know the answer will be bad.
I'm rather on Collard's side on this...
His opinion piece is below the fold

Friday, 25 July 2014

82% of countries that require their Head of State to believe in a particular religion are Muslim....
(Pew tries to muddy the waters and make the percentage lower, by including those countries that require a belief in no religion, which seems rather not germane).
I've also included Indonesia as requiring its Head of State to be Muslim, for that is the effect of requiring adherence to monotheism, where Islam is 88% of the populations.

...our respect for true followers of Islam should lead us to avoid hateful generalizations, for authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.

Why does Pope Francis say this? It's patently untrue, for the Koran is chock-full of calls to kill Jews, Christians and other infidels.
This is part of the Pope's Evangelii Gaudium, in which he talks of "inter-faith dialogue". But does he get anything in return, from any Islamic leader? Why no, he does not.
A much more robust statement not he persecution of Christians in Muslim countries would have been rather more germane and better received.
[A little late on the scene, but interesting nonetheless, and with recent comment, from here]

It's what we -- my son and I -- were thinking just the other day. That critics of Israel's counter-attacks on Gaza are basically saying "Hamas is too inept at killing jews; Israel is too efficient at protecting its population from their missiles. So Israel should stop trying to defend itself and let Hamas get on with missiling Israel, given how inept Hamas are"....Melanie nails it rather better.

We're both equally low on the popularity index in the US: me an Atheist, and they, the adherents to Islam."Jews, Catholics & Evangelicals Rated Warmly, Atheists and Muslims More Coldly" [more](no doubt this will send the apologists of Islam into a frenzy of "Islamophobia"...)

"Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth."

- Omar Ahmad
Founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)

I've noted this before. CAIR is the go-to Muslim organisation for the US government, and markets itself as a Muslim civil rights organisation. But that statement above is still its driving force.

Finally, not even the Arab world can put up with the hypocrisy from Hamas -- the organisation, mind, that wants to kill all jews in the world, wherever they be...
/Snip:

The Palestinian Authority’s representative to the United Nations Human Rights Council even acknowledged that Hamas is committing war crimes by targeting civilians and contrasted that with how Israel is following international law by warning residents before strikes so as to minimize civilian casualties.

Wednesday, 16 July 2014

Rather startling that the good peer and QC should find nothing to trouble him in the doctrines of Islam, to which two of his children have converted...
What's wrong here? What's going on?
Another in the "I don't get it" category.
Hugh Fitzgerald's take, here.

Friday, 11 July 2014

I just spent the better part of the day reading and listening to sermons by the leaders and jihadis of the new “caliphate” in Mesopotamia, the Islamic State (formerly “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria”).

I did so in the vain hopes of learning something “new.”

But it was absolute déjà vu—taking me back to a decade ago, when I was reading and translating the Arabic writings and speeches of al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri, as collated in The Al Qaeda Reader.

Now as then, it’s the same Koran verses; the same hadiths of Islamic prophet Muhammad waging and praising jihad; the same threats of hellfire for the munafiqun (hypocrites or lukewarm Muslims); the same carnal rewards in the now or hereafter for those who join the “caravan” of jihad....

... such jihadi rhetoric is regularly used in mosques all throughout Europe and America—explaining why an inordinate amount of jihadis in Syria and Iraq, such as Abu Muthana, the aforementioned “Brit,” are in fact from the West.

Thursday, 10 July 2014

So what?
After all -- and looking at just two of the five -- Nihal Awad is head of CAIR, (here and here) which is affiliated with Hamas (whose Charter, article 7, calls for the killing of Jews anywhere in the world) and is a part of the Muslim Brotherhood presence in the US, whose aim is:

"a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying western civilisation from within and to sabotage its miserable house by their hands". [ref]

And Agha Saeed is head of the American Muslim Alliance, which has called for the destruction of Israel and for killing of jews (here).
Or maybe those aims by American Muslims are not important to US security according to the New York Times?
In buying into the criticism by Muslims of such surveillance of Muslims, the New York Times is surely helping these Brotherhood-allied outfits in their aims to "destroy" western civilisation by its own hand, exactly as they plan.

Saturday, 5 July 2014

The always reliable Raymond Ibrahim. (no, I mean it; he's seriously serious. And good).Obama’s Secret Directive Supporting Global Islamism.
I remember being surprised and shocked at Obama's Cairo speech on June 4 2009. He blamed the west and the US for all the problems in West/Islam relations. No blame at all on the Muslim side (e.g., conquering worlds by the sword; medieval societal values). He made patently false representations about Islamic science (e.g.: it didn't invent the compass; China did. It didn't invent algebra; India did)*. Inviting the Muslim Brotherhood to the speech, against Egyptian official opposition. It all rather smacked to me of servitude to Islam. The rest of the world, however -- with the exception of the anti-Jihad-- thought his speech just wonderful.
If one takes the most charitable view of the speech as being naive rather than with some Obama-as-secret-Muslim agenda, then, tied in with Ibrahim's revelations, it all makes sense as to just how and why Obama's administration has made such a dog's breakfast of Middle East policy.

Here's a mantra to repeat, to enlighten yourself about one aspect of the Middle East:

"Muslim Brotherhood Bad";

knock head on floor;

"Muslim Brotherhood Bad";

knock head on floor.

Repeat until message has sunk in.

****************************

*Later: another example. In his Cairo speech Obama quoted the Koran thusly:

Now, in the dozen translations of the Koran available online, there is not one which translates that surah (9.119) in that way; as in "always speak the truth". They all are versions of "stick with those who speak the truth", and we all know who those that speak the truth are: Muslims. An exhortation to stick together with Muslims is completely different from the exhortation to speak the truth.

Moreover, barely four lines later (9.123) there is the command:

O ye who believe! Fight those of the disbelievers who are near to you, and let them find harshness in you...

Hardly peaceable stuff.

So it's clear that Obama and his speechwriters grossly distorted this surah to try to bolster the impression of Islam as the "Religion of Peace"...

Friday, 4 July 2014

On the issue of having actually read the doctrines of Islam, I share his experience, for that's what I did years ago, when I kept hearing that it was a "religion of peace", which seemed to me be belied by Islamic actions around the world. And it's correct. The doctrine does indeed call for violence, today and for all time, against we unbelievers….

Some people complain about Islam because of the endless terrorist attacks they read about every day. Others complain about Islam because they read the Qur'an and Hadith and find incredibly violent teachings. No matter how you look at it, reading is a source of Islamophobia. Hence, in order to combat Islamophobia, reading must be eliminated. Join my campaign against literacy.

The ongoing debate re "Moderate Muslims"....
Nathan Lean, this time, echoing Turkey's Erdogan who says "There is no such thing as moderate or immoderate Islam. There's "Islam" and that's it".
Odd, though, coming from a prime Islamapologist. And quite a dope, it seems, from the various other writings of his that I've seen... Mostly Islamapologists need the cohort of the "moderates", to counter the "extremists", who are always a "tiny minority" who have "hijacked" the Religion of Peace...

A good article by William Kilpatrick, on why care should be taken in promoting "inter-faith" dialogue.
I would add to his points: that Islam specifically denies the Trinity of Christianity, calling it "blasphemous". With this central belief of Christianity denied by Islam, how much room, really, is there for commonality? We are all human, yes, but beliefs are not all the same, just because we will them to be so.
Other points Kilpatrick makes are germane:

Muhammad took (stole?) most of the Koran from half-heard, half-digested stories of the time, mostly from the Jewish Torah. In that sense, forget Wall Street: it's Islam that has perpetrated the greatest hostile reverse take-over in history.

The Koran is all about Muhammad. So, it's really correct to call it "Muhammadanism", even if it sends Muslims into fits of rage: it's the truth of the cult, and it's such a dangerous truth, that Muslims hate to admit it. (While they will also copy him as the "perfect man", and ritually intone PBUH, whenever they mention his name).

Islam is a "made up religion", not a revelations to Muhammad. Well, of course; just as are all religions made up.

Not mentioned by Kilpatrick is that the Koran is also about punishment of "unbelievers". That takes up about a third of the text.

Kilpatrick concludes:

What currently seems like the height of enlightened sensitivity on the part of bishops may eventually look like a display of simple foolishness. And, considering how rapidly our illusions about Islam are being deflated by the march of events, “eventually” seems due to arrive well ahead of schedule.

"...it is the duty of those who have accepted Islam to strive unceasingly to convert or subjugate those who have not. This obligation is without limit of time or space. It must continue until the whole world has either accepted the Islamic faith or submitted to the power of the Islamic state."

-- Bernard Lewis, renowned historian of Islam and the Middle East, in The Political Language of Islam, p72-3.

In other words:

"Islam is unique among religions of the world in having a developed doctrine, theology and legal system that mandates warfare against unbelievers."